Paratrooping
Reindeer Sweaters
By Senior year I had perfected the persona of the drunken fraternity meathead, and was especially susceptible to it when:
A. Drunk (which was quite frequently)
And
B. In the presence of my roommate Chris who had not only been my Freshman RA at Major Bill, but was my fraternity Big Brother and someone I looked up to and tried to amuse.
So, one drunken evening we found ourselves at the Hardee’s on Price’s Fork and were getting some late night grease to coat our stomach when I spotted a young student standing in line with his girlfriend. What caught my eye was his reindeer sweater. It didn’t take much prompting from Chris before I was hatching a plan.
Jay Bobb: “Look at that guy and his stupid sweater. I hate it.”
Chris (smirking as he knows what’s coming): “You should go tell him.”
Jay Bobb: “I think I will.”
I stumbled over to the guy then leaned in close behind his left ear away from his girlfriend who was standing to his right and in an alcoholic haze breathed, “I LIKE YOUR SWEATER” in his ear.
He turned his head to see who was talking to him and I stared at him with an idiot smirk on my face.
“Uh, thanks,” he replied, trying to pretend to study the menu.
This time I tapped him on the shoulder, like some piece of scum and villainy at the Mos Eisley cantina.
“I don’t think you understand,” I hissed. “I REALLY like your sweater.”
Now he turned to face me with a frightened expression. His girlfriend was now looking at me clutching his arm. “Go away. You’re drunk. And crazy.”
I kept smiling at him. “I would really like for me to have a reindeer sweater like that. Because I really, really like it. It looks AMAZING.”
“Fuck you,” he replied pulling his now horrified girlfriend by the arm towards a side exit. “Get your own sweater, you drunk fuck!”
Chris was rolled over with laughter as I called out after him as the door swung shut, “You forgot to order your food!”
So, in 2017 when I returned to VT for the first time in 14 years, I had all the necessary props ready and sent this photo to Chris with this note:
“I finally got my reindeer sweater at Hardee’s.”
Telemachus
“There was a sort of innocence to him, I thought. I do not mean this as the poets mean it: as a virtue to be broken by the story’s end, or else upheld at the greatest cost. Nor do I mean that he was foolish or guileless. I mean that he was made only of himself, without the dregs that clog the rest of us. He thought and felt and acted, and all these things made a straight line. No wonder his father had been so baffled by him. He would have always been looking for the hidden meaning, the knife in the dark. But Telemachus carried his blade in the open.”
Page 340
Helios
“His rage was so hot the air bent and wavered around him. ‘I can end you with a thought.’
It was my oldest fear, that white annihilation. I felt it shiver through me. But enough. At last enough.
‘You can,’ I said. ‘But you have always been cautious, Father. You know I have stood against Athena. I have walked in the blackest depths. You cannot guess what spells I have cast, what poisons I have gathered to protect myself against you, how your power may rebound upon your head. Who knows what is in me? Will you find out?'”
Page 361
A Room Of One’s Own
“Circe comes from a society (and a family) that is constantly controlling, dominating, and directing her. I think the only antidote to that is solitude…”
Song Of Ajax 